In those days, Harvard was also known as the nation's recruiting powerhouse.

Alumni were charged with the responsibility of recruiting for sports teams. Fitzsimmons describes Harvard's alumni network founded in the early 30s, as "the most extensive in the [Ivy] League."

This network gave the Crimson a substantial recruiting advantage on and off the field.

"We used to have alumni recruit all kinds of kids for us. One alumni covered just about all of California for us, and he would recruit not only football players, but a lot of other non-athletes, too," says Fitzsimmons. "He would start up conversations with kids he was sitting next to at the games he attended. He opened up a lot of schools for us."

When NCAA rules mandated replacing alumni recruiting with coaches visits, Harvard fought hard against the reversal.

Reardon recalls a fight on the floor of an NCAA convention between himself and Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State football coach.

The Harvard athletic director had argued that it was better to use alumni recruiters because their interest in drawing students went beyond the athletic field to include the whole student.

Under the old system, an alumni recruiter could visit a single school to talk to the quarterback, newspaper editor and valedictorian.

But Paterno believed that alumni could not recruit objectively and called Reardon "a romanticist from Harvard who does not understand the real world."

Those involved with Harvard athletics say moving away from alumni recruiting was bed for the University, arguing that coaches such as Paterno operated in schools with corrupt alumni networks.

"I still think for us it does not make much sense. It pulls them out of the context of other candidates," Glimp said.

Despite debates over the nature and importance of recruiting, all coaches agree there is a permanent trend toward in-dept recruiting as a result of increased academic standards combined with alumni pressure to play well.

For teams such as football, hoping to return to prominence, coaches say a successful recruiting program offers the chance to do well, at least among other lvy League schools